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A guest article by Alexander Drake Regardless of whether John Howard continues to lead the Liberal-National Coalition, it’s worthwhile to have a look at the main battleground seats for the 2007 Australian federal election. Australia’s electoral topography is fairly standard across each of the five mainland states, with each one having seats that broadly fall into the same categories. To illustrate these different types, I’ve created a rough diagram above. It’s not exactly to scale, and there are some seats…

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Is the Co-operative Party’s specially commissioned poll an own goal? We have not had a new voting intention poll for nearly a fortnight and with so much going on I’ve popped into a cyber cafe (I’m still in France) to see if there’s anything that can point to the way opinion is moving. This from YouGov is a poll that had been commissioned by the Co-operative party – which is an integral part of the movement – and we can…

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What’s the political impact of the Quality of Life Report? Yesterday, the Conservative Party’s Quality of Life Policy Group issued a report calling for radical economic and social changes in this country in order to combat climate change. It struck me as being a “courageous” report (in the Yes Minister sense). Proposals included new taxes on short haul flights and cars, a ban on plasma screen televisions, restrictions on the establishment of supermarkets, requirements for businesses to recycle, moratoria on…

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Or will it remain an isolated example? Today’s main story comes not from politics but from economics, where it has been announced that the Northern Rock building society has received emergency financial assistance from the Bank of England. In a very rare move, the Bank will become the “lender of last resort” to Northern Rock, after consulting the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority. The money lent will be substantially above base rate, and Treasury Select Committee chairman John McFall…

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A guest article by Harry Hayfield Conservative majority of 50: Weaver Vale: Con gain from Lab (Swing: 7.01% to Conservative) Weaver Vale (which as the name suggests is based in the historic weaving communities of South Cheshire) is the newest of all the seats on the Conservative hitlist as it was created in 1997 by taking a huge chunk out of Conservative Eddisbury and creating a new seat out of the remnants. Clearly it was the Labour bits they took…

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Has he called this one well for the Lib Dems? As well as the TUC voting in favour of a referendum on the EU Treaty (but rejecting the RMT call for a “No” vote), Lib Dem leader Ming Campbell has added his voice to the debate. In an interview with the FT, he stated that the new EU reform treaty was “sufficiently different” from the original constitution to avoid the need for a referendum. However, he said that if there…

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A guest article by Peter the Punter My brother really annoys me when we go racing. He backs all the short-priced favourites, just so that he can crow about how many winners he had. When I point out his paltry returns he just grins smugly and tells me that a winner is a winner, whatever the price. I tried to shut him up once by offering him a bet on the toss of a coin at the odds of 2-1…

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After the lukewarm speech and a strike vote, will the unions call for a referendum? When Tony Blair was Prime Minister, it usually seemed as though his speech to the TUC was just something that had to be “got through”, and especially post-Iraq, it never looked like an occasion that Blair or the unions found either enjoyable or useful. Somewhat ironic then that Brown, who is far more steeped in Labour tradition than his predecessor ever was, even while being…

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